Nominations Open for 2019 SPS Awards

Rabab Ward
SPS Awards Board Chair

The SPS Awards Board is now accepting nominations for all Society level awards, from paper awards to the major society awards. Nominations are due by 1 September 2019 by 11:59 pm (ET).  Nominators should take into consideration the need for representation of diversity in the award nomination slate, when submitting their nominations.  A new Society Diversity Statement is noted elsewhere in this document.  Detailed information on the nomination process can be found online. 

Who can nominate: Nominations are accepted from any IEEE Siganl Processing Society (SPS) individual member, society committee, or society board.  Nominations from individual members can be supported by up to two endorsement forms from two other individual members.  ALL award nominations must be submitted online through this link.  Submission questions can be directed to Theresa Argiropoulos (t.argiropoulos@ieee.org).

Manage Collaborators on Nomination: There is a Manage Collaborators button in the top right corner of the nomination page. The Primary Collaborator, who is the person who started the nomination, can add additional collaborators on the nomination by clicking the Add Collaborator button. Once a Collaborator is added, the application can be transferred to a new Primary Collaborator by clicking Make Primary next to the name. Access can also be removed from a collaborator by clicking Remove Access next to the name. Only the Primary Collaborator can submit or finalize the application, as well as add other Collaborators. All Collaborators can view and edit the application. However, only one user can be editing the nomination at a time to avoid accidental overwriting of another's information.

Which Awards: Each year, SPS honors outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions related to signal processing through the Society Award, the Technical Achievement Award, the Industrial Leader Award, the Industrial Innovation Award, the Education Award, the Meritorious Service Award, and the Meritorious Chapter/Regional Service Award. The Society also recognizes outstanding publications in SPS journals and magazines through the Best Paper Award, Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award, Sustained Impact Paper Award, Signal Processing Letters Best Paper Award, Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Award, Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award and the Young Author Best Paper Award.

The Best Paper Award, Young Author Best Paper Award, and the Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award papers should have been published in one the following Society journals:

• IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing (JSTSP)
• IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (T-ASLP)
• IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging (T-CI)
• IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (T-IP)
• IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (T-IFS)
• IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks (T-SIPN)
• IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (T-SP)

SPS Awards Changes

Over the past few years, the Society approved some procedural changes to the SPS Awards program, including some new changes approved more recently. Please note that these changes are in effect for the 2019 nomination period. The changes are intended to provide an effective means to encourage award nominations from all categories of the Signal Processing Society community-at-large, including individuals, technical committees, editorial boards and other major Boards, except in cases of conflicts of interest. Technical committees and boards may submit to the Awards Board one or multiple nominations that they receive for any of the Society related awards.

This year, the Society created two new awards called the Early Career Technical Achievement Award and the Regional Distinguished Teacher Award.  The Early Career Technical Achievement Award honors an SPS member who, over a period of years in his/her early career, has made significant technical contributions to theory and/or practice in technical areas within the scope of the Society, as demonstrated by publications, patents, or recognized impact on the field, including but not limited to, a standard, a product, or a technology trend.  The Regional Distinguished Teacher Award recognizes individuals who have excelled in the teaching of Signal Processing and whose educational material covers areas of heightened and timely interest.

The Society renamed some of its major awards, which are:  the Society Award was renamed to the Norbert Wiener Society Award; the Technical Achievement Award was renamed to the Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award; the Education Award was renamed to the Carl Friedrich Gauss Education Award; and the Meritorious Service Award was renamed to the Leo L. Beranek Meritorious Service Award.  The award descriptions remain unchanged.  Other award name changes may happen in the future.

The Society approved the following Diversity Statement: The IEEE Signal Processing Society adheres to the IEEE Code of Conduct and is committed to providing equal opportunity to its members, regardless of ethnicity, race, nationality, disability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, gender, age, and/or personal identity. The Society is committed to a welcoming and inclusive environment that promotes diversity in the signal processing community.

As a reminder, for the Best Paper Awards a board or committee cannot nominate a paper for this award if one or more of the paper’s authors is a member of their board or committee. This above same rule also applies to the Young Author Best Paper Award, however this also includes nominating an author of a paper where a member of a nominating board or committee is also an author on the paper, even though this member is not the “young author” being considered for the award.

One of the factors considered for paper awards is the citation impact information, so please provide this information in the nomination form. The Awards Board will continue to review the nominations and make selections on paper awards.

For all major awards, the Awards Board is responsible for vetting the nominations and producing a short list of no more than three nominations per award. The Board of Governors will continue to vote on the selection of the major awards. An SPS  board or committee cannot nominate one of its current members for an award. However, the board/committee member can be nominated by another board or committee. Current elected members of a committee/board may, however  participate as individual nominators of other members of the same board/committee. In the case of major award nominations, please note: boards or committees who submit nominations, but have voting Board of Governors members sitting on their boards or committees, must ensure that Board of Governors voting members do not participate in the board/committee award nomination or selection process.

Nominations submitted by individuals can have multiple co-nominators listed on the nomination form. In addition, individual nominations can include up to two endorsements from two other individuals. Nominations supported by committee/boards cannot be accompanied by endorsements. IEEE/SPS membership is no longer required for endorsements. All endorsements must be submitted via the online nomination tool, which can be found here. A nominator cannot serve as an endorser for a nomination he/she is submitting. If the Society policies state that a particular Board/Committee/Individual is not eligible to nominate for a particular award, then members of that same group of individuals are not eligible to be endorsers.

For full details on each award, as well as the new Society and Technical Committee/Special Interest Group awards policies, please visit the Society’s website.

If you have any questions regarding the process, please do not hesitate to contact me at rababw@ece.ubc.ca or Theresa Argiropoulos at t.argiropoulos@ieee.org).